新视野大学英语读写Word 文档

The Company Man

morning.

The article about his death didn't say that, of course.

It said he died of a heart attack,

He was a perfect Type A,

but every one of his friends and

acquaintances

knew it instantly.

ten minutes about the way they lived.

This man, Phil, who worked himself to death finally and precisely at 3:00 A.M. Sunday

He had

devoted

the last eighteen years of his life to

More precisely, he was one of

He

worked

himself

to

death,

finally

and

precisely,

at

3:00

A.M.

Sunday

addicted

to working, they said to each other and shook their heads

—

and thought for five or

morning

—

on his day off

—

was at work.

that work. He was fifty-one years old and a

vice

-president.

soon enough

—

have been promoted to the top

spot

.

six vice- presidents, and one of three that might

conceivably

—

if the president died or

retired

Phil could not

afford

a rest.

He worked six days a week, five of them until eight or nine at night, during a time when his

own company had begun the four-day week for everyone but the

executives

.

golf.

To Phil, it was work.

He always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk.

He did not

He was,

divide

his time with outside interests, unless, of course, you consider his monthly game of

of course, overweight and had high blood pressure. On Saturdays, Phil wore a sports jacket

to the office instead of a suit because it was the weekend.

He had a lot of people working under him, maybe sixty,

article

ignored

this information.

But

it

did

list

his

< br>survivors

quite

accurately

.

He

is

survived

by

his

wife,

Helen,

and most of them liked and

The

admired

him most of the time. Three of them will be seriously considered for his job.

forty-eight years old, a good woman of no particular marketable skills, who worked in an

office before marrying and mothering. She had, according to her daughter, given up trying to

compete with his work years ago when the children were small. A company friend said,

know how much you will miss him.

much for the man. She would be

His

beloved

in

a

manufacturing

firm

down

South.

The

day

before

the

funeral,

he

went

around

the

neighborhood

talking to people and trying to get to know his father better. The neighbors

were embarrassed, and pretended to know him better than they did.

His second child is a girl, who is twenty-four and newly married. She lives near her mother

and they are close, but whenever she was alone with her father, in a car driving somewhere,

they had very little to say to each other.

The youngest child is twenty, a boy, a high-school graduate and like a lot of his friends, he

is content to do enough

odd

jobs to stay in grass and food. His father's work did not suit

him.

Still, he was the one who tried to reach his father, and tried to mean enough to him

Over the last two years, Phil stayed

to keep the man at home. He was his father's favorite.

up nights worrying about the boy.

The boy once said,

My father and I only board here.

told

the

forty-eight-year-old

She was

At

the

funeral,

the

sixty-year-old

company

president

missed and hard to

replace

.

widow

that the fifty-one- year-old

deceased

had meant so much to the company and would be

The widow couldn't

bear

to look him in the eye.

afraid he would read her bitterness

and, after all, she would need him to

straighten

out

their

finances

—

the

stock

options

and all that.

Phil was overweight, always

wound

up and worked too hard. If he wasn't at the office, he

You could have picked

was worried about it. He was a natural choice for a heart attack.

him out in a minute from a

line-up

.

So when he finally worked himself to death, at precisely 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning, no one

was really surprised.

By 5:00 P.M. the afternoon of the funeral,

the company president had begun,

discreetly

of course, with care and taste, to make

inquiries

about his

replacement

—

one of three men.

He asked around,

公司人

星期天凌晨三点整，他终于把自己累死了。

当然，

讣 告并没有这么说，

只说他死于心脏病。

但是他的朋友和熟人很快 就明白了是怎么回

事。他是个典型的

A

型人，工作成瘾。相互间他们这么说，摇着头，并且沉思五或十分钟，反

思他们的生活方 式。

此 君叫菲尔，星期天凌晨三点整，把自己累死了。那天是他的休息日，可他却在工作。他把

自己生命中的最后

18

年献给了那项工作。他

< br>51

岁，是公司的一位副总裁。更确切地说，他是

六位副 总裁之一，

而且，

假如公司总裁去世或者很快退休的话，

他是有可能升至最高职位的三位

副总裁之一。菲尔是休息不起的。

他每周工作 六天，

其中五天每天工作到晚上八点或九点，

而此时他的公司除 了当官的，

其他

人都已开始每周工作四天。

他抽不出时间来做户外活动，

除非你把他每月打一次高尔夫球也算在

内。对于菲尔来说，那也是工作。他总是在办公桌上吃鸡蛋色拉三明治。当然，他比较胖，患有